"Making" an academic supervisor

Abstract

This paper is based on my reflections on a series of lectures given by me over a period of three years in a course called Supervising doctoral students. The lectures are, to a large extent, based on my own research on higher education policy, academic career, and gender, and highlight various topics concerning gender, power, and supervision. Through Hacking’s (2007) ideas on how research not only contributes to, describes, and analyses different aspects of the world, but also plays a role in how we make up institutions and people, I elaborate on what studies on gender, academic work, and supervision tell us and how we use the stories we tell as researchers. Researchers like me within the field of higher education research know a lot about gender divisions in academic career, but we seldom discuss how we are participating in normalising specific patterns. Can we present these results without also emphasising “gender difference” or gender divisions? The paper discusses how I handle this risk, but also raises issues about what it means to lecture on gender in higher education and includes reflections about my own position and competence as a lecturer.